“It’s freaked me out thinking what could have happened. It’s the fact that he went to that length of saying he was from a TV show. If he needed help he could have just said – there’s a hospital and police station close by.”

The trauma has left her wary and unable to relax in her own home, she said, but she wanted to use her experience to help other people who may open their doors without thinking.

She said: “There’s a lot of young mums on their own. Not everyone’s got a man around and it’s important that people don’t just open their front doors. I was going to do it because I trusted where I was, but he was a complete weirdo.”

While she could not be sure of the man’s appearance, she said he seemed to be in his late 20s and had a receding hairline.

Hunted is a Channel 4 programme where members of the public have to escape from professional ‘hunters’ for a share of a £100,000 prize. The last episode of the series aired on February 14, the day before Frances’s encounter.